


Brief Flashes of Light

by torolulu



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:02:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torolulu/pseuds/torolulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the past is changed, what becomes of the present?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brief Flashes of Light

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally written for a prompt challenge at the Mylar Fic livejournal community.
> 
> The prompt:
> 
> "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'" - John Greenleaf Whittier

**Virginia Gray**

 

Virginia’s body is warm in Sylar’s arms and he can feel her heart beating against his chest.

Their hands are empty.

He remembers twisting the scissors around in his mother’s hands, remembers pulling her toward him—he doesn’t remember loosening his grip, or the clatter of metal on the hardwood floor.

He looks down; the floor is clear of debris. He feels with his mind under couches and desks that the scissors could have been kicked under in the scuffle; a handful of loose change comes jingling out, sending his mother’s heart racing.

“It’s a miracle,” he says, softly, and it is—his mother’s murder weapon disappearing into thin air a second before it could be used.

He leaves shortly after, in search of further assurance of a future bright in more than the most literal sense of the word.

He stops at a pay phone on the way.

 

___

 

There are two messages saved to Mohinder’s voicemail inbox.

The first says, “You don’t have to worry about me anymore. I’ve been saved.”

The second says, “There’s something I need to show you. Please.”

No address was given, but Mohinder knows he came to the right place when the door he approaches swings open before he could raise his fist to knock.

Sylar sits huddled over a sketchbook on a lonely cot tucked into the corner of the barren room.

“You’re here.” Sylar snaps the sketchbook shut and stands up.

“What do you want?” Mohinder starts slightly as Sylar strides toward him, but he keeps going, past Mohinder and out the door.

He turns back to face him. “Come with me,” he says, and walks away.

Mohinder follows.

 

___

 

Sylar unlocks the door to Gray and Sons and holds it open for Mohinder, following in after him.

Here in the shop a hundred doomsday clocks surround them, counting down their time together.

Sylar panics at the thought and grabs Mohinder, urgently pressing their mouths together.

Mohinder pushes him away. “Is this what you came here to show me?” He makes no effort to keep the disgust off his face.

“No.” Sylar walks to the back room to retrieve a canvas. He holds it up for Mohinder to see.

“It’s a painting of the future,” he says.

“But it’s—”

The clocks tick one more time and then stop.

 

 **Isaac Mendez**

 

The first thing Sylar sees upon entering the loft at 215 Reed St. is an easel displaying a black and white painting of himself standing sated and triumphant above the fresh corpse of Isaac Mendez.

“He really can paint the future.” Sylar steps further into the room. “Just like the professor said. Fantastic.”

He turns three hundred and sixty degrees and walks a small circle around the room, taking in the art while surveying the ground for his quarry.

His feet stop moving and he turns his gaze to the floor. His black boots sit in stark contrast against the bright orange of a mushroom cloud blooming like an autumn tree above the New York City skyline—the world ending, with a bang.

He closes his eyes. His head quirks like a hunting dog. His ears are open to the room.

The only heartbeat he hears is his own. He listens to the subtle change in its rhythm as his emotions turn from excitement to rage and files it away in his limitless memory for later reference.

Mohinder. He must have predicted Sylar’s destination and secreted Mendez away before he arrived.

When Sylar raises his head and opens his eyes he is faced with an unfinished painting of himself looming menacingly over a pristine patch of white canvas.

He twitches his finger and it splits down the centre, pulling apart like curtains as it falls to the ground to present him with a view of the blank canvases on display behind it.

Sylar spins around to survey the room a second time before leaving; empty squares now surround him, staring at him blankly, pale and white as though drained of their life.

Sylar lowers his eyes. Beneath his black boots, the floor is drab and grey.

 

___

 

Mohinder’s door swings open at Sylar’s thought.

“Where’s Mendez?”

Mohinder, standing by the window and staring out at the city below, doesn’t answer, doesn’t flinch—doesn’t even turn around.

Sylar moves to stand beside him, curious of what could be more interesting than himself.

The view is like an old photograph that’s been left in the sun.

They watch it fade until it looks like Mohinder’s apartment has been buried in an enormous snowfall.

Sylar opens his ears to the city.

The circumference of his hearing increases to encircle the apartment building, then stops, as though it’s hit a force field.

Sylar listens.

On every beat the building loses another heart.

When his count dwindles down to four he moves to kiss Mohinder, knowing that by the time their lips touch they’ll be the last two souls alive in the universe.

Mohinder kisses him back as the colour bleeds out of the world. They close their eyes and fade into the white.

 

 **Charlie Andrews**

 

The drive from Virginia back to New York, Mohinder observes, is far too long to make without any company. He hasn’t even seen another car for miles. His increasingly frequent glances in the rear view mirror have convinced him that the isolation has made him paranoid. What does he have to be afraid of? Sylar, Eden told him during a particularly revelatory phone call, turned up murdered in a Texas diner and his corpse cools in the wall of some shady organization’s basement.

Mohinder glances at the rear view mirror. There are no ghosts breathing down his neck.

He turns on the radio to stave off the loneliness; static buzzes all across the dial.

Mohinder's eyes return to the mirror. This time he sees it, what’s been bothering him—the road appears to be disappearing behind him, at a pace he can’t outrun.

When it catches up it feels like being turned inside out and enveloped by the absence that he senses in his gut.

 

 **Gabriel Gray**

 

As Gabriel’s nimble hands fall to work on the task laid out in front of him, his mind turns, as it often does, to a strange man who came to him asking for forgiveness, and warned him, for the sake of both of their souls, to avoid a man named Doctor Suresh.

Underneath his hands, Mohinder is spread out like a thousand cogs and gears for him to take apart and put together as he pleases. The bed beneath them is small, but sturdy as a work bench. Gabriel notes with the subtle eye of a craftsman the way the legs barely shake when he finally penetrates Mohinder; and he notes with the scornful eye of a sceptic the way the frame doesn’t crack open with the floorboards below it to dump him down into the depths of hell as he fucks his supposed damnation.

 _I almost listened to him._

“Calm down, Gabriel,” is whispered softly in his ear. “It’s been a long time for me too.”

He disentangles the fingers that have, in his reverie, become wound tightly around Mohinder’s curls and loosens his grip on Mohinder’s hip.

“I’m sorry.” He starts moving again, sweeter and gentler, and kisses Mohinder on the mouth. _If I see him again_ , he thinks, as he dips the tip of his tongue between Mohinder’s lips, _I’ll kill him_.

When he come he sees stars—bright white ones that expand to engulf his entire field of vision.

 

 **Usutu**

 

The high desert sun glinting off the edge of his sword nearly blinds Hiro as he raises it against his target, but his aim is true. “I am sorry,” he whispers as he feels skin break. “There was no hope for you.”

The glare brightens as he presses the blade further and further through Arthur Petrelli’s neck, until the only way for Hiro to tell that his task is complete is the sudden lack of resistance against his muscles as he follows through on his strike.

He wonders if this, finally, is the bright light into which he has been told he would walk.

 _Not like this_ , he thinks, but the light keeps shining, brighter and brighter, until it has consumed him.

 

 **Hiro Nakamura**

 

“Hiro.” Ando snaps his fingers in front of Hiro’s eyes. “Earth to Hiro. Hiro!”

“Ando!” Hiro suddenly snaps his head up to look at him, sending Ando jumping back nearly three feet. He knocks into the desk chair behind him, and it wheels across the room.

“You two need to stop horsing around in there!” Kimiko shouts as she strides past their office.

Hiro laughs. “I thought that she had calmed down when you two got engaged.”

“What? Engaged?” Ando places the back of his hand over Hiro’s forehead. “Are you feeling OK, Hiro? Kimiko hates me.”

 

___

 

“That is quite a relief, Doctor. Thank you.” Hiro puts down his phone. “The brain scan shows no signs of a tumour.”

Ando lets out the breath he had been holding. “Why did you scare me like that, Hiro?”

“I don’t understand. Before I went to the past, I was sick.” Steel flashes in Hiro’s memory.

“Losing my power made me sick,” he realizes. “He never took my power and I never got sick." Hiro smiles. "Everything is back to normal.”

 

 **Mohinder Suresh**

 

“You’ll be OK.” Sylar lifts a string of sweaty hair out of Mohinder’s eyes. “There’s still time. We’ll find the catalyst and we’ll cure you.”

A shallow breath rattles out of Mohinder’s lungs.

His heart beats one more time, and then stops.

The world around Sylar remains bright and solid, refusing to fade.


End file.
